The 'Cultural' Policy.—Anxious that on this question all sections and parties in Jewry should be united in a common effort, the Committee intimated to the Zionist organizations as far back as the winter of 1914 their readiness to co-operate with them on the basis of the so-called 'cultural' policy which had been adopted at the last two Zionist Congresses in 1911 and 1913. This policy aimed primarily at making Palestine a Jewish spiritual centre by securing for the local Jews, and the colonists who might join them, such conditions of life as would best enable them to develop the Jewish genius on lines of its own. Larger political questions, not directly affecting this main purpose, were left to be solved as need and opportunity might render possible. Unfortunately. an agreement on these lines has not proved practicable; and the Conjoint Committee are consequently compelled to pursue their work alone. They are doing so on the basis of a formula adopted by them in March 1916. in which they proposed to recommend to His Majesty's Government the formal recognition of the high historic interest Palestine possesses for the Jewish community, and a public declaration that at the close of the war 'the Jewish population will be secured in the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, equal political rights with the rest of the population, reasonable facilities for immigration and colonization. and such municipal privileges in the towns and colonies inhabited by them as may be shown to be necessary'.
That is still the policy of the Conjoint Committee.
Meanwhile the Committee have learnt from the published statements of the Zionist leaders in this country that they now favour a much larger scheme of an essentially political character. Two points in this scheme appear to the Committee to be open to grave objections on public grounds.
Nationality and religion.—The first is a claim that the Jewish settlements in Palestine shall be recognized as possessing a national character in a political sense. Were this claim of purely local import, it might well be left to settle itself in accordance, with the general political exigencies of the reorganization of the country under a new sovereign power. The Conjoint committee, indeed, would have no objections to urge against a local Jewish nationality establishing itself in such conditions. But the present claim is not of this limited scope. It is part and parcel of a wider Zionist theory which regards all the Jewish communities of the world as constituting one homeless nationality, incapable of complete social and political identification with the nations among whom they dwell; and it is argued that for this homeless nationality a political centre and an always available homeland in Palestine are necessary.
